Red App Push Notifications Increase Retention

Please engage with me. It’s the new mantra for marketers in the digital age, where we want our readers to not only consume our content, but also to comment, interact or pass along. Yet with so many people shouting into the digital ether, how do we get more than our fair share? It appears that part of the solution is those red app push notifications.

A recent study by Localytics, a digital research firm, revealed that those red circles significantly drive higher interaction and reduce abandonment rates.

The study, which defined app engagement as a launch of the app, was 88% higher on average among mobile app users worldwide who had enabled push messages. Enabling push notifications also resulted in users launching the app two to three times more often than without notifications.

Personally, I find the notifications obnoxious, and do my best to minimize the number of red circles that show up on my phone. But the reality is I do pay attention to the notifications, and like to clear them as soon as possible.

There is a variance across different app categories. Ecommerce was the best, with a 278% increase in launches among users with push notifications enabled vs. disabled. Localytics noted that personalized and targeted messages from ecommerce apps, such as reduced prices on items of interest, could drive engagement and interaction. Music apps also fared well, with 177% higher engagement among push message users, and travel as well as food and drink both joined the over-100% club, too.

It seems that ever app I activate these days asks to notify me – whether it is an app that holds my loyalty cards, tracks my workouts, or just enables me to craft ideas via mind maps.

How about you? How do you decide when to let an app send you notifications?